Editor's note: Hurricane Irene was more than just a story I covered as a journalist – I lived it and saw how it devastated the homes of many of my family and friends, especially those in Cranford and other flooded towns. This is the story of my sister and her family as they were forced to evacuate from their Cranford home in the aftermath of Irene. For more on the three-year anniversary of Hurricane Irene, read our story: Three years after Irene, Cranford officials say catastrophic flood could happen again

CRANFORD —My 9-year-old nephew Andrew was on a mission. He had spread across my mother's home in Clark a massive collection of soggy baseball cards. It's his father's collection from when he was Andrew's age, and from Hank Aaron to Darrell Strawberry, Andrew's trying to save them all.

On the morning of Aug. 28, 2011, when the massive flooding from Hurricane Irene came surging through my sister Julie Labrutto's home in Cranford, the binders of cards were among the wreckage in the seven-foot-deep swimming pool her basement had become. Her son Andrew, who has never been able to focus on one project for more than an hour or so, spent days carefully removing the cards from their binders and boxes and laying them one-by-one wherever he could find space to dry them. As his parents struggled to reclaim their home, their life, and so many keepsakes ruined by floodwaters, this was the one small way Andrew intuited he could contribute. It's heartbreaking to watch.

Julie, 42, and her husband Michael, 46, are particular, organized folks. Even when a hurricane isn't on its way, Julie has an unhealthy addiction to watching the radar during bad weather. When they heard Irene was coming, the Labruttos expected what they and many others in Cranford are used to by now – some flooding.

They'd already survived Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the year they bought the house, and Tropical Storm Barry in 2007. Michael had two sump pumps and a backup battery should the power go out. Julie just about bought out the town's bread supply. They moved things up a few feet off the floor in their basement. They left a car at Orange Avenue school to prepare for a worst-case scenario if their street flooded. They felt ready.

Julie first learned about a mandatory evacuation of some homes in Cranford the way we seem to learn lots of things these days: someone posted it on Facebook. A flood map on the town's website depicted the 100-year and 500-year flood zones in Cranford, telling all within both boundaries to pack up and get out. Soon, they received an automated call to their home phone giving the same message. But the Labruttos felt prepared, they chatted with their neighbors and, seeing their homes only within the 500-year zone, almost everyone on their block – the 500 block of Central Avenue – decided to stay and tough it out.

"We were on the cusp of the 100-year zone, but still within the 500-year zone," said Julie. "Michael was like, '500 years? I'll take my chances.'"

BATTLING THE WATERS

"It started as a big fight, because I wanted to leave and he wanted to stay," said Julie. "But we didn't want to separate, and our neighbors were staying, so we decided to stay."

Through the night the Labruttos watched the water trickle into their basement and diligently mopped and Wet-Vac'd. They packed bags just in case. They took turns sleeping for an hour each. Things were chaotic, but okay.

"It's amazing what you can do with little sleep and pure adrenaline," she said.

It was about 8 a.m. on August 28 – Julie's 39th birthday, coincidentally –
when things changed. Water started coming in faster and faster. The
kids pitched in – nine-year-old Andrew manned the Wet Vac and seven-year-old
Sarah pushed a mop. The sump pumps were going at full speed.

Things took a turn for the worse when the power went out around 8:30 a.m. Michael's battery backup – an expensive, overnighted purchase from Amazon.com – only powered the high-octane pumps for about 15 minutes before it died.

From 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., the Rahway River was rising in earnest. Though the rain stopped around 10:30 a.m., the water in the Cranford streets continued to rise. A dike broke and the river still hadn't crested, Julie said.

"It was like we were this little house on the top of a hill," said Julie. "I was watching it move step-by-step up the front walkway. I couldn't take my eyes away from the windows. I kept thinking that at any moment it was all just going to rush right in the front door."

In the hour that followed, Julie said she was in a daze. As she ran between downstairs to check on the basement and upstairs to watch the flooding, she saw the streets surrounding her house turn into rivers.

"I was trying to make lunch for all of us – we had skipped breakfast altogether – but I couldn't count the pieces of bread right," she said. "I gave Sarah jelly and she doesn't like jelly. I watched Michael working so hard, but I kept saying to him, 'Have you looked outside? I know your doing all this, but you haven't looked outside. If you saw what I'm seeing, you'd know it's futile.' He was pumping the water out to the street, but the water in the street was rising to our door."

"We like to be under control at all times and this was something we couldn't control," said Julie. "I gave up before he did. He just couldn't. He had to do everything he possibly could to save it."

With his pumps shut down and the water pouring in through the fireplace, the windows and even the dryer vent, Michael eventually gave in. The water now knee-high, for 15 minutes he frantically grabbed what he could and tossed things upstairs.

"It was almost like a relief at that point," Michael said. "I could finally catch my breath because I was exhausted from how physically demanding the night was – not just dealing with the water as it came in, but also going up and down the stairs, moving heavy items up on top of the washer and dryer. All the while, I never realized we were going to eventually have seven feet of water."

The Labruttos called the fire department and asked to be evacuated but were put on a long list.

"Now what?" they thought.

PACK YOUR BAGS – AND THE GO-GURT

"Red canoe! Red canoe!" Michael shouted to a man paddling through the streets. He explained they were looking for a ride to their car a few blocks away and asked if the man would paddle them over. The man agreed and they spent a half hour each packing a small backpack to evacuate.

"We had packed the night before, but thinking we'd leave by car not canoe," said Julie.

Julie wanted to bring some of the food she'd bought; operating in survival mode she was worried about how long the ride would take to get to our mother's in Clark and if they would get there at all. For whatever reason, she laughs, she grabbed a few packs of Go-Gurt, the yogurt in a squeezable tube. "I have no idea why," she says now, remembering. "I guess the Go-Gurt was going to save us."

The canoe took them a few blocks until they could walk to their car at Orange Avenue school.

"I started walking with the kids and that's when I finally broke down," Julie said. "I had no idea what would happen next. As soon as you realize you just left it all behind, and everything you've been through for so many hours..."

In a cell-phone video Michael took before they left, you can hear the desperation in his voice. He interviews Sarah while they stand at the back door surveying the rising waters. "Well, until next time, house. We tried our best," he says.

GOING BACK, SALVAGING

When I talked to my sister that night, she was trying to take stock of what she lost. It was the Christmas decorations that bothered her most. In trying to find a gift for her birthday that day, I found the perfect thing: A Noah's Ark Christmas ornament. I'm glad my sister has a sense of humor.

When they first returned to their home, Julie and Michael put a pump through the basement window from the outside of the house – afraid to step in the water for fear of electrical shock. The water was seven-feet-deep and had almost reached their basement ceiling, but the first floor was spared.

Michael had a super-strength pump brought up from his job at Greenacres Golf Course in Lawrenceville, where he's the club pro. Realizing the strength of his heavy-duty equipment, he pumped out three other neighbors' homes before heading back to Clark for the night.

Our family spent the next day at their home taking photos out of their albums and setting them out to dry, cleaning CDs and DVDs in an assembly line and stacking them on paper towels. I put a paper towel in each page of my sister's baby book, reading over the wet pages where my mother had neatly recorded her first word, when she took her first steps, how she loved to dance.

"Yes, we lost a lot of expensive things," said Julie, "but I was most upset about the things we can never replace. The kids' first artwork. Pictures, memory books."

Every home on her block – and many more throughout Cranford – had a wall of stuff on the curb in front of it. The wreckage was overwhelming and varied – furniture, nostalgia, clothes, washers and dryers. It looked as though the town was having a massive garage sale.

"When we first moved into the house, we had to have flood insurance," said Julie, even though the previous owners told them they never had an issue with flooding. "Then, a few years ago, they said we were no longer in the flood plain and didn't need it, so we dropped it and they sent us a check."

PARING DOWN, BUILDING UP

"What's ironic about all of this," said Julie, "is that I've been going through a stage of really wanting to simplify my life, pare down, clean out. The basement becomes a catchall for stuff and though I would have rather had chosen what to get rid of, this is sort of a lesson in that."

Julie thinks about why they decided to stay and didn't evacuate sooner.

"It's funny," she said, "You saw those people during Hurricane Katrina and a lot of people think, 'Well, geez, that's stupid. Why didn't they leave?' At some point, I turned to Michael and said, 'We're the crazy people you see on the news who stay. But when it's your own house it's a different feeling. We felt if we were there, we could do something. You want to stay and protect your house."

Three years since Irene, it's as if the Labruttos have to answer that same to-stay-or-to-go question daily. Should they leave Cranford after all of this? Will they ever be able to resell their home?

"I don't know if I can go through this again," Julie said. "We were traumatized, the kids were traumatized. Every time it rains, it's hard not to panic. But it could have been a lot worse, and there are a lot of people in town who had it worse. And it brought our family closer because we went through this together. We survived it."

The Labruttos renovated their basement with help from a little insurance money they did receive. They added a French drain and sealed off the window where most of the water came in.

"I don’t think lightning strikes twice," said Michael. "Even though there have been scary days and forecasts of heavy rains, I think whatever happened during that very unusual time – as devastating as it was, and not to sound naïve – I have a hard time believing it could happen again at that capacity."

"Cranford is still our home and it is more than just a house – it's where our lives are," Julie added. "The kids love their neighborhood, friends and school. I love the support network of friends and neighbors we have. We can hope we survived the 500 year flood and that we will be okay for another 497 years."

"The experience brought us together as a family and as a town," Julie said. "The kids grew up a little that week. It's an experience we try to forget, but every time there is a heavy rain, we each can't help but get a little knot in our stomach remembering what could happen. But then I remind myself, it's only a house and we survived."